Dante

Abstract

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is familiar with imitative strategies. Although he makes only two explicit statements about literary imitation, both of them in the problematic and unfinished De Vulgari Eloquentia), this chapter complements and contextualizes by examining his other implicit ideas on the topic. Although Dante theorized about imitation in his earlier works, it is only in the Commedia that there is a more specific exemplification of the imitation of classical authors. This imitation in the vernacular, however, although hinting at an embryonic humanism, was not destined to mark the beginning of a trend. Dante's poem was a unique work, a summa, almost inhibiting future writers from following his path. The generation after Dante was also influenced much more by Petrarch than by Dante.